Jonathan Coulter (70 or 71) is a PSC activist. Moreover he is a member of the secret Palestine Live group in Facebook that is riddled with antisemitism. He initiated a judicial review of the IPSO decision regarding the Times and Sunday Times coverage of a meeting in Parliament hosted by Jenny Tonge in October 2016. A meeting that saw full-on Holocaust Denial and blame of Zionists for the Holocaust. He lost……Coulter thinks ‘the press is bullying people in such a way that they are reluctant to speak up on Israel/Palestine’. And he thinks that the reason MPs join Friends of Israel organisations is because they are “scared of being done over by the Jewish Chronicle”. You get the picture………….

Tim Lllewellyn (78) was the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent for ten years. He thinks the Zionist movement is an ‘alien polity’ which has ‘penetrated the British government and British institutions‘. He often sees Jews under the bed …

So do you think these three auspicious scholars conclude that antisemitism on the left is a problem? No prizes for the right answer: “No”. Campaigners against antisemitism in Labour are said to be bent on ‘creating a minefield for critics of Israel’ and on ‘ensuring that Jeremy Corbyn never becomes Prime Minister.’ In short, we’re in the world of Antisemitism Denial.

Let’s take their sham study apart. Their first section is on statistical data. They reproduce a Pew Research chart which shows that negative views of Jews is less in the UK than in six other EU Member States. The problem is that the research just tested negative views of Jews in the country of the respondents – nothing about Israel – so the definition of antisemitism was wrong. The correct definition is the widely accepted IHRA definition.

Then they use the infamous Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) survey which – they claim – shows ‘strong antisemitic attitudes’ on the left as no higher than the right (apart from the ultra-right). Wrong, see my analysis of the JPR Survey here. Again, the definition of antisemitism that the JPR used was wrong – astonishingly for a respected research organisation at the heart of the UK Jewish community. When it comes to anti-Israel attitudes, the proportion of the ‘very left-wing’ holding at least one anti-Israel attitude (seven out of eight of which are antisemitic) is around 78-79%, way above that for the general population (47%).

As I said at the time, the research has provided a wide open goal for Corbyn. I take no pleasure at all from being proved right.

Coulter et al go on to cite the Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer. It is true that agreement with non-Israel based antisemitic statements is found to be higher on the right than on the left. And that the proportion not endorsing any (non-Israel based) antisemitic statement is higher in Labour (68%) than in the Conservatives (60%). But look at this chart from the survey (the response is of Jews). I wonder why they didn’t include it 🙂

They then go on to cite the Home Affairs Select Committee’s 2016 Report on Antisemitism:

Possibly that Report predated the CAA’s monitoring of antisemitism in political parties – but it’s simply wrong. Labour has seven times more cases than the next nearest Party. No doubt the Labour MPs on the Committee insisted this passage went into the Report; one wonders what Chuka Umunna MP would say now, after leaving Labour for ChangeUK.

They turn now to Home Office data and suggest that Jews should be thankful that ‘only’ 10% of antisemitic crimes involve violence, versus 30% in the case of all racial or religious hate crime. Daniel Allington has taken this one on. It is perfectly possible that Jews face so many non-violent antisemitic crimes that the violent element is compressed down to 10%. Hardly evidence that Jews should ‘stop complaining’.

Next the three luminaries suggest that Jews have it easy (in terms of likelihood to be the victim of a hate crime) than a BAME person. They provide no data so it’s impossible to check their results without searching it out.

Next they quote from a CST report finding that around three-quarters of all politically-motivated antisemitic incidents come from far-right sources. Note ‘politically-motivated’. Most antisemitic incidents are NOT ‘politically-motivated’. Next comes a quote from a World Jewish Congress Survey in 2016, that “90% of antisemitic tweets in the UK came from far-right perpetrators”.

Again we have the definition problem: That WJC study did NOT include the Israel-based antisemitism which is a speciality of the Left.

Next come Labour Party data. The Party stated that (as of February 2019) that just 453 members were in the queue for investigation for antisemitism or had been investigated. But Labour Against Antisemitism puts the real number far higher. As of February 2019 it had reported 1,200 cases since 2016.

Jewish Voice for Labour wants to mobilise this sham statistical study to persuade journalists (ahead of the EHRC announcement) that allegations of antisemitism in Labour are false and are designed to undermine Corbyn. Fortunately it is so shoddy that it will have the opposite effect.

The Labour Party Forum recently discussed Glyn Secker’s appalling speech at the anti-Israel rally in London on 11 May. There is defamatory material about me in the comments. If it is repeated I will not hesitate to take legal action. Some below-the-line comments on me by Adrian Cohen (aka Leon) have been passed to me.

Adrian has known me for at least 20 years. He knows perfectly well I have nothing to do with the EDL. But instead of categorically saying “Hoffman has nothing to do with the EDL” look how he noncomitally distances himself from that assertion (“Hoffman vigorously denies….”)….

Adrian knows perfectly well the reasons why I believe that Rich should not be a ZF Patron. And he could have read my blog to remind himself. Above all it is that Rich maintains that to advocate for ‘One State’ (that is, the end of the Jewish State of Israel) is not antisemitic. IHRA says ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination’ is antisemitic.

Again look at his noncomittal ambivalence (“It isn’t something I have researched”).

Adrian is a member of the Council of the Jewish Leadership Council – its top policymaking body. He is also a Trustee. Plus he chairs the London Jewish Forum. Plus he’s a Deputy. With those kind of responsibilities you’d think he might be less noncomittal about rebutting defamatory lies about other Jews, wouldn’t you …………

This BBC2 programme was appallingly biased against Israel and will add to antisemitism. It was clear what Olly Lambert’s strategy was. To show the ‘brutal’ IDF responding savagely to innocent unarmed Palestinian protesters who just wanted to cross over the border to see their ancestral lands. Moreover this against a backdrop of US and Israeli political leaders celebrating callously the recognition by the US of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – they would be portrayed by Lambert as uncaring about the loss of life in Gaza.

This is far from the reality – which the programme hardly touched upon. Indeed how could it, when the timescale was constrained to be just one day?

Gaza is ruled by the terrorist organisation Hamas which wants to murder Jews (and BBC “yahud” means ‘Jew’, not ‘Israeli’, please don’t sanitise the antisemitism). Discontent with Hamas is now in the open – where was that in “One Day in Gaza”? Nothing happens in Gaza without Hamas so the programme’s suggestion that Hamas was not involved initially in the Friday protests simply defies credulity. The programme said that Israel ‘strictly controls’ goods flowing into Gaza. No – see the COGAT website – all goods are allowed in in unlimited quantities – the exception is items that can be used for weapons manufacture. Children are brainwashed to hate Israelis – there was little reference to this apart from Bader who says that the revolutionary songs sung on the protests encourage him to rip off the head of an Israeli and Bashir Faraj who says he’d kill an Israeli soldier with his teeth and Wisal Khalil who “always wanted to be a martyr”. If the Palestinians were allowed to breach the fence they would go into Jewish homes and murder Israelis – the programme never made this clear. And it failed to explain how the sick in Gaza are often treated in Israel.

There were some elementary errors too. Near the start of the programme the narrator (who was he, with the ridiculous husky voice, was that supposed to represent empathy with the Palestinians?) spoke of the ‘decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital’. Wrong. The USA has long recognised Jerusalem as the capital – the US Senate simply delayed moving the Embassy there.

The worst part came towards the end when it was suggested that Israel used drones to spread toxic gas (there was no mention of tear gas). Israel does NOT use illegal weapons, of which toxic gas is one. The people shown with convulsions were acting. Tear gas does not have that impact – and it must have been tear gas. It’s called Pallywood ………. Note that the film the BBC used was not shot by BBC cameramen!

“On 15 February you published an editorial regarding allegations against Jeremy Newmark when he was CEO of the JLC. You said that ‘he must never again have any role in public life’. Just three weeks later you reported that the police had dropped the matter and that there would be no investigation into Councillor Newmark.To anybody who had bothered to do their homework it was obvious that Councillor Newmark had done nothing wrong. Last week Councillor Newmark was re-elected. At the Hertsmere Borough Council meeting on 24 April I asked the Council Leader, Councillor Bright, to apologise to Councillor Newmark. He had signed a letter quoting from the JC editorial to known Jewish households in Borehamwood. The despicable innuendo of the letter was that Councillor Newmark’s conduct had contributed to concerns about antisemitism in Labour.

Last night in Finchley Road London outside JW3 (the Jewish cultural centre) there was an anti-Israel demonstration led by today’s Yevsektsiya – IJAN (International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network UK). I and a few others countered it. The reason for the demonstration was set out in this letter in Camden New Journal. The letter of course is a nonsense. There is nothing illegal or amiss in British citizens volunteering for the armed forces of allies of the UK. As there is nothing illegal or amiss in non-British soldiers in the British Army. Many non-British soldiers volunteered in World War Two. By 2008, the British Army included 6,600 foreign soldiers from 42 countries (not including Gurkhas).

The renegades included many of the usual suspects, eg Tom Suarez, author of antisemitic books (the man on the right of the photo).

The IJAN flier is reproduced below. It also includes the letter published in the Guardian absurdly comparing Israel to Brunei (which stones LGBT people and adulterers), signed by a clutch of far left ‘luvvies’ including Ken Loach who thinks that MPs who go on demonstrations against antisemitism should be expelled from the Labour Party. (Seret’s response is here).

The truth however is that Garin Tzabardoes NOT “encourage young people to join the IDF”(not that there would be anything wrong with that!). It simply supports Diaspora Jews who choose to live in Israel and serve in the IDF.

But since when did the truth ever bother Israel Haters ……………….

After the demonstration there was a wonderful film, Good Morning Son – highly recommended (shown in the Seret season). Shame none of the renegades stayed to watch it.